Listen to the Math
by Amenson
Summary: A look at the events of 'Enemy of my Enemy' told by Alternate-Astrid. PeterXAstrid oneshot.


**Listen to the math**

**The events in 'Enemy of my Enemy' told by Alter-Astrid Farnsworth.**

The Fringe Division in New York has an interesting guest today. His name is Peter Bishop, the Secretary of Defence's son who died twenty years ago. Based on the gossip around the office and personal intervention of the Secretary himself, there is a seventy nine percent chance that everyone believes that is who he claims to be.

The odds that someone could still be alive after being pronounced dead by THE Walter Bishop and his staff are one in over three hundred million, a numerical impossibility. And yet, there he is, large as life itself. His explaination is that he is from a different timeline, another impossibility.

Even working in the Fringe Division where impossible happens every day, this particular man is a conundrum and a curiosity, something that I never see.

The world is predictable. Nature follows a strict set of laws that govern all of life. Science is straight forward. Cause and effect. People are rational, their actions dictated by the events that occur in their lives. Parallel universes are an inevitable conclusion, two opposite forces that balance each other out at the end of reasoning. Time is quantifiable, a set progression of experiences that plays itself out from past to present. Even though the odds dictate an innumerable amount of possible outcomes and predictions, only one can be lived and only one can occur.

The fact that this 'Peter' claims to be from a different timeline is intriguing, if he is telling the truth. I scan his face, his body language, and his speech pattern to detect any discrepancy in what is considered 'normal' behaviour in either universe. As far as is revealed by his standing next to me, there aren't any noticable contradictions in his stance or his eyes. But how am I supposed to get him to talk?

"Do you mind if I take a look at your list of locations?" He asks.

His timing couldn't be more perfect and my multitasking skills kick in, analysing his tone, accent, and sentence construction, all while giving him all the maps located in the harddrive we recovered. After a moment of intense scrutiny, I come up with nothing. No evidence to contradict his statement or disprove anything the man said.

Could this man truly be who he says he is? I stare at him firmly. Impossible to determine. Is this impossible man really from another timeline? I give him a look of intimidation, a symbol that he is treading on my work.

"I don't mind." I reply and take a step back.

He gives me a short look with an entrancing smile on his face, noticing my stares and solidifying his own dominance of the situation. I want to know the truth. I want to know the facts. There are too many variables to take into consideration and the probabilities are upwards of ten digits. Calculating the exceedingly slim chance of something that such a man may or may not be could take days, maybe weeks! As he scans the information I gave him, I decide to ask him a question, something I was never accustomed to.

"Are you really from another timeline?" I blurt out hopefully. I don't expect him to answer, let alone that his answer is a satisfying one.

He looks at me with a worn look, forlorn as if longing for something barely out of reach. He dons a weak smile and nods, all of the indications of an honest person. "Yeah, I think so."

The millions of thought processes in my mind stopped and all that is present is my abundant and unreserved fascination with this man. Every action in my life was calculated. Every thought in my days had purpose, but meeting him marked the first time I've been so filled with curiosity that nothing else matters. I have no reason to look at him anymore, but I can't seem to take my eyes off him. I feel obligated to give some sort of intellectual response, but nothing forms in my mind. The only option left to me is to give the first comment that can leave my lips. "Cool."

His smile changes from forced to genuine, as if taking a compliment. His eyes linger for longer than they normally would before he forces them away and back onto the task at hand. This truly is an intriguing man.

I gaze investigatively at him while he searches the information before him. This is a monumental event. This man has seen things happen that never occurred in our universe, experienced a whole other life before being trapped here, but here he is.

As his eyes move rapidly over the maps I searched thoroughly, I can detect a very small something. Recognition. A familiar idea that translates through his body language, indicating that he has seen something I missed.

Impossible.

I am one of the smartest and most dedicated agents ever to work in the Fringe division. The processing speed of my mind is second to none on the entire coast of America. I am able to coallate information and discover any discrepancy with accuracy and speed. How could this stranger find something where I have not?

I was distracted by the man's incessant tapping on the screen. "Hey Astrid, could you bring the others? I know where he's going." Impossible. I looked over the same data myself and found nothing. How could he be sure? Then again, Agent Lee said that we work with impossible every day. It appears as though there is more evidence corroberating his statement.

I nod and walk away from the table, slightly shocked that he found it so quickly and that I have been assigned such a menial task. I shuffle over to the desk where Agents Dunham and the other Lincoln are talking. "I'm sorry to interrupt. That man, Peter. He says he knows where Jones is going."

We all gather around the information table to listen as Peter explained what he knew. "I think he was looking for a mineral named Amphillicite."

I recognize the name in the minerals section I once read. Interjecting, I describe the information I remember. "It's found mostly under sizable deposits of limestone." Ashamed that I had not perfomed my duties adequately, I felt obligated to report my fault in the matter. "I overlooked it's significance!" The words came out forced and with my obvious humiliation and defeat lining them.

My heart became stricken with the grief associated with a failure to do my job when I felt a hand on my shoulder and a gentle squeeze that imbued a sense of reassurance and pride. I realize that his hand is on my shoulder, an act that no one has ever done to me before. Instead of being repulsed by the physical contact as I always am, I revel in the warmth that is offered and my pulse quickens at his touch.

I look at the hand and take in all of the details. The fingernails are cleancut, but nibbled at a little. The skin is worn and creased, almost begging to tell all the tales it experienced in its many years of experienced. The bones are pronounced and rough, obviously subject to many fights, yet still able to handle the most precise tools that science requires. The veins are visible but not bulging, a sign that he keeps his calm above all else. My eyes follow his wrists up to a very long arm and stout shoulders. Our eyes meet for a split second and I realize just how tall he really is.

"Because, on its own, it has no significance." He reassures me and dispenses the faults I placed at my feet while reaching out to me with compassion and warmth. His mouth keeps moving, but no words come out of his mouth. There probably was something being said, but I'm not paying any attention. All of my senses are just drawn to this man. This impossible, brilliant, strong, confident, and honest man.

The next destination had been set while I was distracted and the entire team prepped for departure. Broyles quickly went to his office to recieve the proper warrants to raid a mining site. Agents Lee and Dunham retrieved their coats from their respective desks. I saw that Bishop man speaking with one of the junior investigators, who then pointed him down one of the hallways. He smiled and nodded, briskly walking down the path given to him and out of my sight. I close my eyes and they look beneath the lids rapidly, connecting mathematical probabilities and computing variables with frightening speed.

After a moment, the path becomes clear. I walk through the desks and down the same hallway he went not long ago. I then go through the corridor that lead to the restrooms, making a quick stop in the janitors closet and retrieving a piece of paper.

Seconds later, I find myself standing in front of a door with the symbol for male at eye level. With a foriegn gleam in my eye, I hang the paper on the door handle and open it, sliding myself through it silently as I hear a flush. Peter Bishop emerged from the stall and walked over to the sink, collecting water in his hands to clean them and douse his face. The time was fast approaching. As it stood, the chance of my success was approximately eight percent.

He grabbed a nearby towel and buried his face in it and it was then that I decided to make my move. I reach behind me and turn the lock, making an audible clink spread across the room. Peter looked up from behind the towel and met my gaze in the mirror. The only readable emotion in his face was curiosity, not fear that he was locked in the room with a potential shapeshifter.

"You shouldn't have corrected me. Nobody corrects me." I intended my response to be steady, but it came out rushed and restless, making the favorable odds drop by the second. Deciding to abandon my obviously futile attempt, I turned around. "I overstepped my bounds, I should..."

The hand that made my heart race was on my shoulder again, pulling me back and turning me around to face him. The same hand pinned me on the wall while the other one rested beside my head for support.

He was close now. Closer than anyone has ever been before. I can feel the warmth radiating from his body and his hand on my skin. The sound of shuddered breaths filled the room and it took me a moment before I realized that it was mine.

His hands moved from my shoulders to the base of my neck, grasping gently before pulling me in. Our lips met in a movement of sweet surrender, very light, very chaste, but unreserved in our outburst of emotion.

A tear fell from my eye as the feeling swept over me, the emotions more intense than I have ever experienced in my life. He broke contact long after he started it and noticed that I was crying.

He brought a finger to my cheek and wiped it off, giving me a look of support. No words were need between us, an unspoken bond that formed in an hour and would cease in less than that.

I turned to unlock the door and we both left promptly. He walked off to investigate the mine and I returned to my station. Everything returned to normal, something all the odds in the world couldn't calculate. I brought a finger to my lips, brushing it lightly in rememberance of the single moment that I could never predict.

Sometimes the ramifications of an event are small, limited to things like a coin falling on heads rather than tails. Some events cause reprocussions that are massive in magnitude and scale. Such is the case with the Bishop family. I was able to witness such an event firsthand, able to see it. To touch it. I will remember it every day of my life.

Fin.

**Disclaimer: I do not own any character or location in the Fringe Universe. This is and always shall be a work of fiction that I am not profiting from in the slightest.**

**I've been sitting on this one for a while now and I'm surprised it wasn't done before. It's one of those things that kind of claws at you until it gets out, so there it is.**

**Amenson out.**


End file.
